Research articles and similar publications, whether disseminated in print or electronically (e.g., in the form of PDF documents), are conventionally created and consumed in static form, i.e., in a manner that does not allow modifying or supplementing the content post-publication. This severely limits the ways in which authors and readers can interact with the published content. For example, for readers, the fixed structure and layout of the publication may render it difficult to focus on a specific aspect of interest (as portions of interest are generally interspersed with other, potentially distracting content). Further, carrying on a public discourse about a publication may be cumbersome, as it generally involves communication vehicles and channels separate from the publication itself, such as additional articles referencing the discussed work, or online or offline discussion fora. For the author of a research article, publishing any revisions to the article may be limited to very narrow circumstances (e.g., a retraction or correction of clearly erroneous statements), and publishing any updates to the research itself is usually a protracted and tedious process that may take the form of an entirely new publication; as a consequence, the threshold for publishing research in the first place is typically very high.